"The day following this immunization, I felt sick, as if a cold were starting," Colosimo told Congress in an October 2000 hearing, shortly before he was processed out of the military with a 70 percent disability rating. "I felt fatigued, lightheaded and had a headache."

"A few days later, I developed a cyst on my scalp," he said. At first, that seemed unimportant, compared with the other problems. But the cyst grew, then another appeared near his eye.

MORE CYSTS AFTER SECOND VACCINATION

A year later, he got a second anthrax vaccination, with similar results. There were more cysts, and the old ones got bigger. After another shot two weeks later, the fatigue, flulike symptoms and headaches returned. Also, more cysts - totaling nine. And they hurt: "The pain I was experiencing from these cysts was unreal."

After enduring this for four months, Colosimo went to the base hospital. That's when he began to think his problems were related to the shots.

The base doctors denied a relationship, he told Congress. They made him take the shot again a month later. Although sick, he deployed to Kuwait, where he lost 50 pounds in three months and frequently felt as if he were going to pass out. He felt dizzy and suffered memory lapses, shortness of breath and other problems.

When he returned to Hill for treatment, the base hospital told him that he couldn't see his medical records - and ordered him to take another anthrax vaccination, Colosimo testified.

He refused and was threatened with court-martial, he said. Officials backed off only after his mother got his congressman involved.

MORE THAN 200 FALLS IN SIX MONTHS

Colosimo said he got worse and began passing out - falling and hurting himself. His face, studded with cysts, was bloodied and bruised from falls. Hill hospital officials, spurred by the congressman, sent him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

There, he was diagnosed with "anthrax intoxication" and sent back to Hill, records show.

Doctors at Hill accused him of faking his illnesses, including rapid loss of vision. When he went to the emergency room after one nasty fainting spell and fall, his home was searched by military police - who asked neighbors whether they thought that Colosimo was using drugs, congressional records show.

After another bad fall, a military police officer summoned to help instead started twisting Colosimo's nipples and jerking him up from the floor - while yelling that he was a fake, Colosimo told Congress.

Eventually, Colosimo went back to Walter Reed. Doctors diagnosed neurocardiogenic syncope. That's when someone's blood pressure drops significantly after standing up because the blood vessels and other mechanisms in the body designed to automatically compensate for the changed effect of gravity don't perform normally.

No one's sure what causes it. But doctors think that it might be related to a failure of the autonomic nervous system. That's the part of the body that tells the heart to beat, muscles to contract and expand, and the lungs to open and close - all without conscious thought.

In a six-month period, Colosimo told Congress, he fell more than 200 times.

During the hearing, U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., got frustrated with military officials who denied that the day's heart-ripping stories from 10 soldiers, airmen and sailors were related to the vaccine. The only case that the doctors and generals acknowledged was Colosimo's.

"Mr. Colosimo's problem, the doctors do believe, was caused by the anthrax vaccine," said Marine Maj. General Randy West, then the military's chief liaison to Congress for the vaccine program. "Occasionally, that happens. It happens in very small numbers, and we wish it didn't happen at all."

Since then, Colosimo and his wife, Tracy, haven't had much of a life, friends say.

Given his medical problems, she's had to be his full-time nurse - or get family members to be with him. That means she can't work much, and his disability pay isn't generous. They've shuttled between their parents' homes in two states, ultimately declaring bankruptcy this year.

"He has his good days and his bad days," Tracy Colosimo said this summer, before declining to talk further. "We've dealt with Tom being sick for several years and would really like to be left in peace."

SERIES INFO.

Tom Colosimo often wears a hockey helmet to protect himself from frequent falls. Colosimo is an Air Force veteran who once served at Langley AFB. Mr. Colosimos problem, the doctors do believe, was caused by the anthrax vaccine, Marine Maj. General Randy West told Congress in 2000.

Tom and Tracy Colosimo with their wedding picture. Colosomo had once been stationed at Langley Air Force Base. He testified to Congress in 2001 and was in the news a few times between 1999 and 2001 because his health rapidly deteriorated after he got the anthrax shot.

Federal prosecutors are accusing a Hampton man of spearheading a local drug distribution conspiracy in which a customer who thought he had bought heroin died after unwittingly injecting a more potent alternative into his veins.

A Civil War-period coat worn by a nurse — a woman from a prominent Mathews County family who some believe was the only woman to be commissioned as a captain in the Confederate Army — is among the nominees for Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program.